MacroQuest64

Well it looks like certain merchants are being despawned on some of the servers and I can only assume it has to do with the people sitting around them macroing tradeskills excessively.

Please everyone show some restraint and don't ever macro while you are AFK. We will all end up suffering for it.

only assume

That's one hell of an assumption considering it's been going on for years and there are versions of MQ out there that have been clicking for a lot longer than the current MQ and doing things a hell of a lot worse.

Confirm it please.

those are big words from someone with 17 posts, dont come in here telling us what to do, less you have real proof cause we all know what the word ass|u|me will get ya.

Guys, guys, please. :)

His words may be harsh, but his intentions are honest -- he doesn't want to see the entire MQ community suffer for a handful of people's greed. I can't say I blame him. None of us can.

Post numbers don't matter -- I lurk these forums nearly every day following conversations, etc., but only post when I feel the need to (like now, for instance). I've been a member of the community for about 9 months, and I've followed it non-stop.

Yes, he did make one hell of an assumption. But, considering the round of bannings, the tradeskill combine interval, and the price changes (these last two are rather drastic changes to the game to counteract this very issue), I think it's a valid assumption.

On the other side of the argument, though (and I do so love to be on both sides), confirmation would be most appreciated, one way or the other. And I do hope he's wrong.

I tried to warn people 2 weeks ago:

http://macroquest2.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2392

I even got some pm's from some folks who said they'd "clean up their macros". Hey, I ain't the police, don't tell me what you're doing with your macros, just listen when I try to tell you that your behaviour is blatant and obvious.

It got worse instead of better. People had offset hacks in place to keep enviro containers open at the same time as merchant panels. They were combining away happily hidden (so they thought) in inconspicuous places, with their stupid 25 cha mugs in each hand.

Now instead of the same people standing in front of these combiners for 24 hours straight, they were standing away from them, but you still couldn't use the combiner, and so more people petitioned, obviously, that they can't use the container, but nobody is there.

So now the people are most likely suspended, maybe banned, their money gone. The combine that yielded a pretty decent profit compared to what else is left out there is gone. The merchants that sold the required components are gone. Sony will probably take a closer look at remaining recipes that are "2 step" combines and make sure there are NONE left, and will probably crack down on MQ and offset hacks a little more closely for awhile.

There were 8 gm's on Stromm last night around the time the merchants got depopped. A few admins, lead gms, and regular guides, etc. Thanks for drawing attention Firlgix, Crotoboxo, Renthiel, Croaakkee, and all the other mindless wankers who don't know how to practice restraint and be a little less conspicuous ...

BN

Personally, I think Sony is intent on cracking down on offset hackers morseo than the averge MQ user. Trust me, if MQ did 10% of what some of the real offset hackers can do, they'd have to shut down the game. I think what is happening is that the longer the game progresses, and the more they've pissed off hackers, the worse the hacking has become..and it's now an all-out war.

I can confirm what he is saying is 100% true.

This is exactly what I said would happen, as soon as the click code was released here the abuse began to skyrocket and I do mean SKYROCKET. It was relatively nice for quite awhile when the masses didnt have the click code. Yes there has been click code floating around for sometime and I know because I wrote some of the versions that were floating around but it was not nearly as widespread.

What Cromwell just said is right on the money, I personally witnessed people running AFK macros spamming the hell out of certain npcs in game, carelessly.

Theres absolutley no need for that and it will just end up hurting mq even more eventually.

Actually banananose is right that they are nerfing the combine. I actually talked to a GM last night while they were patching the merchants. They will be changing the combine in question.

For those didn't know the Rusty->Tarnished->Brick of Ore is going to be changed.

Jaerin

Amadeus wrote:Personally, I think Sony is intent on cracking down on offset hackers morseo than the averge MQ user. Trust me, if MQ did 10% of what some of the real offset hackers can do, they'd have to shut down the game. I think what is happening is that the longer the game progresses, and the more they've pissed off hackers, the worse the hacking has become..and it's now an all-out war.

I think Absor should be posting on this board thanking us profusely for not releasing something to the public that could cause MAJOR havoc with the system. MQ is pretty benign, in the grand scheme of things.

I hate to be the one to inform you of this, but MQ is the vehicle of choice for offset hackers, download the source, make a few changes, add your own offsets to DKAA's memchecker and your all set. There are numerous posts about it over on f-h and at this point due to Sony's memcheck routines its pretty safe to say that about 99.99999% of all offset hacking involves the use of Macroquest.

Well...those people need to be banned anyway. Spamming an NPC is stupid as hell.

Even if you're going to do a tradeskill macro, you should put in some delay as to not draw attention to yourself more than necessary...and for God's sake sit there with it and don't go afk.

I hope they ban everyone that is running some lame money-making macro. GOD I HATE THOSE.


For everyone else, I really wouldn't worry to much about MQ at the moment. Sony will do the "Cleansing" of the ones we need to be rid of without us having to worry about it...I'd just advise everyone else to be cautious until the Grand Inquisition has run its corpse and MQ users figure out they can't be stupid anymore.

I hate to be the one to inform you of this, but MQ is the vehicle of choice for offset hackers, download the source, make a few changes, add your own offsets to DKAA's memchecker and your all set. There are numerous posts about it over on f-h and at this point due to Sony's memcheck routines its pretty safe to say that about 99.99999% of all offset hacking involves the use of Macroquest.

But, MQ != MQ+offset hacking. If MQ didn't exist, someone at ForeverHacking would have just have created a front end for the offset hacking anyway.

My point is simply that if no one used the offset hacking shit that's going on (ie, Backstab from ANYWHERE in the zone?! ..comon) ...I don't think SOE would care that much about what we do here.

Sony will probably take a closer look at remaining recipes that are "2 step" combines and make sure there are NONE left

Good. Good riddance to them.

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Seriously though, the /click code was in MQ for a LONG time before the newUI nerfed it. We just have to give a little time for folks to get their wits about them again and realize that they have to be just as careful with it as they were in June 2002. I think that Sony will (if they havn't already)make a policy of allowing "so much" hacking in order to avoid the mess they're in right now. God knows things were a lot more "normal" back before they tried nerfing all the hacking....now, everyone got upset and the gloves came off..and we have a huge damn mess.

So yea, let them ban all the idiots and crack down on those that are being completely stupid.

I've never followed any "profit combines" before, so I could be totally wrong about this, but it all seems a little two-faced to me. There seems to be people yelling at the AFK macroers calling them 'greedy' and telling them that their actions are going to cause sony to remove combines that result in a profit.

My question is: Who cares? I assume that sony never intended for these combines to result in a profit in the first place, so all sony is going to do is fix some bugs in the tradeskills.

I can only imagine one possible scenario for why these people would be angry, saying things along the lines of "Thanks alot, now sony is going to fix the combines!" -- and that is that these people, too, were exploiting combines for a profit, and now they're upset they wont be able to do it anymore.

If you were exploiting tradeskills for profit while AFK, if you were exploiting tradeskills while using offset hacks, if you were exploiting tradeskills "quickly" or "slowly", or if you were doing it "greedily" or not doesn't matter. The bottom line is you were all doing it in one way or another, and now sony is going to fix it. Get over it.

Amadeus,

The people in the upper levels of f-h are generally clueless (with the sole exception of Domosan), they had no idea how to fix their offset hacks until MQ figured it out first. The purpose of f-h, for those who havent figured it out is to collect all interesting information from those who have talent and put it into the hands of the select few in their higher level groups most of whom have little to none.

Back to the topic though...

In your statement that click was around long before oldUI was nerfed, you are correct, however abuse of MQ was also at its height just before oldUI was nerfed and Plazmic went MIA and click got broken.

It doesnt really matter that much, click is released and you can do alot of nice things with the click code in mq but I do hate to see people abuse these things and cause more trouble for others down the road.

Okay people get all pissed off or not. I don't care.

Whether you like it or not this is an evil of open source. Sure it's available for everyone and that's great, but that means you can't tell anyone how they should be using it.

Just like all the Linux distros out there can't tell the hacker to not hack thier distros, or develop exploits for them. The only thing they can do is clean up after thier mess.

So like it or not this is a fact of life people. Love it or leave it...

Jaerin

Ahh, Jaerin, voice of reason. Everything you say in that post is absolutely correct.

I believe the point of this debate is not that we are trying to tell everyone who uses the software what to do with it. It is a debate of ethics and etiquette. It is considered, by the MacroQuest community at large, unethical to create MQ-based software (ie, source changes or macros) that exploits EverQuest in the attempt to make profit, in Platinum or RL money. Additionally, anything that brings attention to the MQ community (ie, spamming of merchants, preventing people from using environmental containers, etc.) is frowned upon. From what I've seen, everyone contributing to this thread is in agreement with this statement.